| 摘要 |
<p>A magnetic tape (22) is formatted to be interchangeably usable by a plurality of types of devices, including an audio/visual recording/reproducing device (14), a random access recording/reproducing device (16), and a sequential access recording/reproducing device (18). The tape has frames (22) of a plurality of frame types, including control frames and user frames. Each frame has an AUX data structure (300) wherein resides a field which indicates the frame type of the frame. Selected ones of a plurality of control tables or frames (340, 342, 344, 346, 348) are present on the tape in accordance with the type of data recorded on the tape (e.g., audio/visual data and non-audio/visual data) and the particular types of devices which are to utilize the tape. The user frames of the tape have a field in the AUX data structure which specifies the nature of the data therein, e.g., as general purpose data or audio/visual data. The tape has a permanently embedded servo format whereby each of the frames are hard sectored with a permanent physical relationship to the tape.</p> |
